THE HORRIFIC MONSTER FROM A THEOLOGICAL DIVINE PERSPECTIVE OF PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS

On the essence of technology

(11-5-2019, Amsterdam).

(Absolutely) believe to (objectively) see before

you can (subjectively) see to (objectively) believe

(that you are looking at this physical same duck…or that physical same hare).

 

Understanding this article can start by being attentive to the difference between the mechanical and the functional. The same objective physical movement that you can see, a breathing, a ritual, a scribble etc., can be executed mechanical or functional, lively.

 

Executive summary purely mixed with a preface

Part I. (27-4-2019, Amsterdam). This will introduce both the fiction paradox & horror paradox. Why do we listen & read & watch horror, which implies that it is real, if horror is unreal? Why do we like horror if it disgusts us? Horror is real and unreal at the same time and is pleasurable and disgusting at the same time.

Part II. This part will re-describe the notion of objective reality being an appearance of something absolute, as more real than (the objective) real, in a subjective illusion. It will re-describe appearance, objective reality, positively as a literary invention (bounded by divine law) in showing objective reality cannot be reduced to the subjective (whether you say that the objective is totally material or totally spiritual) neither absolute. The literary invention is not identical to absolute creation neither to subjective construction. The invention is bounded by a given constitution, divine law. In inventing you constitute objective reality. (This is thought along the lines of Roman Ingarten).

Objective reality is objectively given as we shall show in a problem, a contradiction, an opposition between subjective life and subjective spirit, between looking at life as a goal in itself and looking at life as a means to attain a higher life. In choosing between these opposites one can see both life and spirit as holy means to experience the Absolute, the transcendent. Life is a means to experience that life is and has always been spirit essentially and in that experience in the turn from life to spirit you experience the turn and experience the Absolute. A contradiction between timeless-time and time in which one can seek for the eternal and find the eternal. (Herakleitos saw objective reality as conflict, as strife, as strive to solve conflict (in order to solve a greater conflict to assemble hero-power to raise oneself to the absolute domain in which spirit is not opposed to life by life), as holy war (to ‘attain’ the soul)).

From within ‘Part II’ you can solve the fiction paradox: we like the unreal because it is reality is unreal so the unreal is real. The horror paradox cannot be solved in this part and more over because even more of a paradox: if horror is real why to we like to experience it! The horror paradox becomes more poignant within Kantianism if it is not solved.

Part III. This part reasons not that reality is unreal, as in ‘Part II’, but that the unreal is real. These ways to reality are two sides of the same coin. Describing the objective from the perspective of the subjective is an expression of kantian tradition, Kantianism. In this tradition the objective is not reduced to the subjective as if the objective, objective reality, is identical to the subjective, identical to illusion, nothing, timeless, contradiction. Objective reality in in essence a subjective objectivity. Describing the objective from the perspective of the absolute is an expression of platonic tradition, Platonism. In this tradition the objective is not identical to the absolute. Objective reality is in essence an absolute objectivity.

It is a very subtle difference and Platonism is more truthful. Platonism explains both the fictional paradox and the horror paradox as well: unreal horror is more real than what is objectively real and we like horror because in it we see a holy divine absolute reflection of the transcendent Absolute Holy. In Kantianism the human subject is thought as a subjective distorting timeless prism that breaks seeming objective colourless light into many subjective objective (timeless-temporary) lights. In Platonism the prism is thought as an absolute object, a highest object, a highest being, eternal time that reveals objective temporary colours in the absolute eternal light that is not colourless, but is one colour, the colour of the One. Kantian objective appearance as a subjective objectivity versus Platonic objective appearance as objectivity. Objectivity as subjective objectivity versus objectivity as objectivity. Platonism is more objective than Kantianism because it is more absolute. Self-conscious in the conscious of the transcendent versus the transcendent makes self-conscious possible via the conscious of the transcendent. Different possible objective worlds versus different dimensions, hierarchies, within the one world. The difference between Kantianism and Platonism is very subtle, but has big consequences. A difference that can be thought in the difference between the Newtonian wording ‘breaking’ the light and the Goethean wording ‘revealing’ the light. A difference between making a mistake yourself about what is objectively true and divine illusion as a less divine absolute objective perspective. A difference between theories of colour. A different between ontologies.    

By contrasting the different sides of objective appearance, a new theme, question, to philosophy is given and a method in answering indirectly but vividly via the fictional and horror paradoxes. Another advantage of discussing horror is that it can clarify (or confirm) ontology. An ontology is a description of reality in the sense of what (beings) exists, how it exists for itself and with others. (It is about world, existence and co-existence and we shall see that the co-existence of highest beings constitute the world in which the highest, higher and lower beings can be ‘in’). In what is missing in a certain being, for example a horrific vampire, namely life-force (that needs to be replenished with that of others) we can get a better view on what the essence is of what is missing and that that something is missing is real. Or think of the zombie as a human being that misses ‘spirit’ when you believe the soul is the (form) of the body or misses soul if you believe the soul is eternal in which a zombie is a body with spirit (that appears in the body as life-force). Horror stories can be used to raise ontological questions, in regards to the ontological status of life, the body, the spirit, the soul and their relations etc., more clear. Defining horror (monsters) can even help in defining aesthetics. For example the ‘sublime’ as a supernatural power that shows itself in the natural without any moral dimension. The sublime as a monster that is not a monster because it is neither good nor evil. When you have the ability to clearly raise a question a clear answer can come (and the right ontology will be part of your inventory of concepts that constitute your perception of an object and see (from with)in the object what is objective, absolute and subjective).

Part III discusses the views of Aristotle, Carroll and Freeland on what a monster is and on how to define what horror is. Aristotle and Carroll define the monster in a non-moral way, Aristotle as a natural malfunctioning being that does not function naturally, caused by an evil, and Carroll defines a monster in an anthropological Wittgensteinian way as a supernatural being in which the supernatural is the effect of a confusion, an impure mixing of purities, of our natural categories, are fundamental ‘ontological’ concepts (in which we describe our reality. For Carroll reality is rational in the sense that it can only be described by science, so reality is objective). (Categories not of the pure, but categories as pure in the sense that you are not allowed to mix pure categories with each other because they have their own fixed domain: the category of life is about life and the category of death is about death). Freeland defines the monster morally as evil allowing for natural monsters, as Hannibal the Cannibal, to be monsters, while for Carroll stories about natural monsters are not horror stories, but stories of terror.

It is reasoned that the supernatural appears within the natural as malfunctioning for a person that abides by logic for if the ‘super’ of ‘supernatural’ cannot be and at the same time the supernatural is different than the natural it can only be less than natural, thus a malfunction and because the natural is good the non-natural malfunctioning ‘natural-less’ is not good, thus evil. The same argument can be given for why the monster is ugly. Higher beauty can appear as less than beautiful thus ugly. In the fairy tale of the ugly duck the ugly duckling was really a beautiful swan more beautiful than the beauty of ducks, but appeared as ugly to the eye of ducks when the swan was small. (The highest beauty will always appear as beautiful).

It means that in defining horror Carroll is right in defining it from within the supernatural evil monster and Freeland is right in making evil a defining element of horror. Carroll is more right than Freeland, although both seem not to believe in the supernatural itself. They cannot really solve the fiction paradox and horror paradox.

Pseudo-Dionysius in discussing how angels appear to people who do not have eyes for the transcendent, that is beyond both the natural and supernatural (as a highest and higher nature in the sense that nature as lower nature is a lesser supernatural ‘nature’), as monstrous. That gives us a key to see monsters as angeletic and shows why we like to watch horrific disgusting monsters for they remind us of supernatural angels that remind us of the truly transcendent One. With Pseudo-Dionysius the structure of how disgust of impurity transforms into a holy pleasure more pleasurable than material pure pleasure of the pure is described. In describing the turn from a feeling of disgust to a feeling of pleasure it is shown how the natural mirrors the supernatural and how the supernatural appears and is manifest in the natural. An absolute objective transformation from an absolute subjective objective feeling of disgust to an absolute subjective feeling of pleasure. A transformation from Kantianism to Platonism. With Pseudo-Dionysius we can explain that we can see the holy, that is more pure than the pure, in the impure. 

It explains why we cannot resist looking at an accident on the road. Looking at people with blood all over their faces. Blood should be subsumed under the category of ‘inside the body’ because blood is by analogy ‘spirit’, that is more inside the body than the body is inside itself, and when blood is seen outside we see that blood does not fit our normal ordinary rational categories of inside and outside and reveals the ordinary rational as ordinary and subjective. Blood shows us the supernatural very vividly. 

On LinkedIn this article stops near the end of part III. The reason is that the paradoxes are sufficiently solved at that point. If you want to explore the other parts and ontology in general more and want to see the remaining part of the article you can contact me.

PART I. THE SUBJECTIVE PARADOX

What this article will bring you(: salvation from the fiction & horror paradox)

(13-4-2019, Amsterdam). You will be able to (dis)solve the ‘fiction paradox’ & the ‘horror paradox’. The fiction paradox in explained in the form of a question: why do we like watching ‘stuff’ about what does not exist and is purely fictional? The horror paradox* is explained in the form of another question: Why do we like watching horrific scenes that frighten and disgust us? Philosophers of literature, theorist of literature and adherents of comparative literature are haunted by these paradoxes.

When I heard of these paradoxes last year, being a ‘Kantian Neo-Platonist’ (and being initiated in Triz, as the philosophy of technology in the form of a method to solve contradictions/’paradoxes’ by profane principles, by Valeri Souchkov), by an automatic reflex of thinking I answered that fiction is not fiction when a transcendent ‘platonic’ idea is conveyed and that that also is the key to understand why we like horror, namely because we see something real, an idea, a transcendent divine idea in the horrific, and as a true Neo-Platonist can see the beauty and Good in that idea, in other words we can see something Good in horror (even if it is in a distorted way).

Or we will reason (as in ‘Part II’ of this article) that monsters are indeed totally fictional, unreal, but that reality is fictional, unreal, in itself. Well objective reality, time, is the appearance of absolute eternity, that is more real than what is objectively real, in the subjective timeless unreal. Reality as appearance presupposes that something more real than real appears in an illusion. Reality is not an illusion, but an appearance. The illusion the form of appearance and eternity the ‘matter’ of the appearance. (Het gaat om ver-schijn-ing van het eeuwige in de tijdloze schijn en verschijning veronderstelt een vooraf gegegeven schijn. De verschijning is de tijd, je geest, zelf).

This article will explain the answers by the seemingly non-existing fictional horrific monster. The monster is the object of thought and how we will think about the monster will be in the spirit of the of subtle Christian Neo-Platonic mystic philosopher Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

 

(* The word ‘paradox’ is used several times in this article to make the illusion to the ‘Fiction paradox’ and ‘Horror paradox’, but in wanting to be philosophical pure it would have been better to use the word ‘contradiction’ instead. A paradox is a self-inflicted contradiction like ‘This sentence is not true’).

 

 

(The ‘pseudo’ of) Pseudo-Dionysius

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is a church father both of the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox church. He portrays himself as Dionysius who is mentioned in Acts 17:34 and lived in the first century AD. ‘Pseudo’ translated through Latin means the ‘falsum’, that is the unreal fictional, the false, the untrue, but in Greek the Greek word ‘Pseudos’ conveys an essence as on our use of the word pseudonym.

Writers, fiction inventors, invent fictional names for themselves that convey what they are writing about and that fictional name is more appropriate, more real, than the real name of the writer. Kierkegaard called himself ‘Johannes de silentio’ in his book ‘Fear and trembling’ and ‘silentio’, silence by keeping silent, is one of the themes in the book. His pseudonym says more about the content of his book than his official name inscribed in the books of the state.

Pseudo-Dionysius, who do not know his official name, called himself ‘Dionysius’, but lived in the 5th of 6th century AD. History added the ‘Pseudo’ to his fictional name in a Latin way saying he is the false Dionysius. ‘Pseudo’-Dionysius never pretended to be the Dionysius to whom Saint Paul refers. Being a church father of two Christian traditions he is also a father, an original inexhaustive origin, of both philosophy and theology.

 

 

Thinking the non-technological essence of technology with the paradoxical concept of the ‘divine monster’

Technology is ubiquitous. This article is typed on a computer and published on a digital platform. The ubiquity can be suffocating and oppressive and especially because it grants you all kind of freedom, forms your life, your possibilities. Technology is so ubiquitous that it is closer than you are to yourself. You may even be mediated in your self-conscious by technology in the sense that it allows you to think as you think (following courses online etc.) or because you came in the world via technology (in vitro fertilisation etc.).

For sure that is a difference between a hammer, a collective network of hammers (machines), a collective network of machines (a computer) and a collective network of computers (the internet) so to be clear I am talking technology in the sense of the internet, the network as such or a hammer to the fourth power (hammer4). You need to be able to have a thinking to the fifth power, the fifth dimension, to understand the internet. Our understanding can actually use the fifth dimension: the fictional imaginary number ‘i’, the square root of minus 1, to the power of five is ‘i’ itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Hz7XezTCg&t=2s.

It is very hard to think from the monstrous imaginary number, the square root of minus one, that cannot exist for our (normal) thinking/understanding, yet seems to exist because we can use it in mathematics and solve real problems, so it is quite natural that in 2002 Pope John Paul the second (1920-2005) named the writer of encyclopaedia’s Isidorus van Sevilla (560-636) the patron saint of the internet! For it is difficult to have an understanding of the 5th dimension in order to rule over technology. Without that understanding you are ruled by technology.

This article may grant you some distance to that ubiquity, grant a free space, by seeing technology as (a) monstrous (monster). That open free ‘space’ will allow you at first glance not to escape from technology, but in embracing technology in its divine transcendent eternal quality. Technology is thought through by making the analogy between the analogy of technology and magic and the analogy between a monster and an angel. That angelic angle on angles will actually bring us right into the essence of the analogy as analogy and analogical neo-platonic (and hermetic) thinking (as a thinking to the power of five).

 

For more on the essence of horror go to:  

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/zombies-work-%C3%BCber-untermensch-test-more-james-roolvink/ &

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/concerning-cloud-horror-fantasy-science-fiction-stories-roolvink/ (the chapter ‘Introduction into the meaning of the impossible’ and chapter ‘The impossible for rational understanding in horror, fantasy and science (fiction)? Defining genres of the impossible!’).

 

For more on the essence of technology go to:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/el-even-perspectives-technology-james-roolvink/ &

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/meaning-labour-imagination-age-technology-james-roolvink/ &

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/platonic-age-virtualisation-technology-james-roolvink/

 

Some etymological keys to the monster that open the heavenly door

These etymological keys do not only open the door, but walk you through the door where you can find the answers. We concentrated the object of our thinking on the monster in order to dissolve both the fiction and horror paradox. So what does monster mean? ‘Monster’ comes from the Latin verb ‘mōnere’ which means to warn or to advise in the subtle ‘light’ meaning of to make someone perceptive of something. ‘Mōnstrum’ is the Latin word for monster and means a (divine) being that reveals the will of the gods and can also mean that what can be conveyed by that being, namely the ominous omen itself. (I dare state that a shift in meaning from the messenger to the message is a historical shift in time parallel to a decline in culture and conscious of the transcendent (that makes the conscious possible of higher ‘immanent’ beings)). The mon-ster represents something other than himself, like mon-ey represents, or should represent, value.

In Dutch a ‘monster of something’ for example of a perfume means monster as a sample. The monster represents something other than itself because that monster is at least partly, or in a distorted, way that what it represents. Your hand represents your whole body (the thumb the head the two fingers in the middle your legs and the other fingers your arm) in a distorted way (at least for the average eye). When in horror stories a hand is isolated from the body as an independent being the hand is monstrous in the sense of ugly and is literally a monster. That distortion means that the hand is at the same time identical to the whole body that it represents and yet not-identical. The monster is a non-identical identity.

A summary or trailer is not monstrous because it cannot symbolise the whole story or movie like a monster can do whose elements or rather how they relate represents the relation between all the elements in the greater whole that it represents. A monster is that what it represents, but in a symbolic way, in the sense that a whole represents that what is more whole. It is about a grade of wholeness or unity or oneness. That is not coincidence for in monster we hear ‘mon’ from ‘monos’ which means oneness. A summary or trailer is not one thing in itself and only represents parts of that what it represents.  A summary or trailer does not represent the whole of the story or movie. A summary or trailer is just an image. (For more on the symbol (and the difference with an image go to: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/business-poetry-james-roolvink/). 

Well if we think of a being that makes the will of the gods known we think of a daemon in ancient Greek times or a genius in the ancient times of the Romans or a djinn in Arabic (although do not necessarily make the divine known, but can be a(n evil) sign that the divine One exist). If one studies the Greeks well one sees that they do not always make a categorical distinction between gods and their daemons because daemons are called gods from within the perspective of men. One may conclude that daemon is a relational-term one gives in relation to a lower god in relation to a higher god. A godly divine daemon or a daemonic god as a mixing of the ‘categories’ god and daemon was as a mixing, not a confusing, that we also see when Plato in the beginning of his ‘Symposium’ writes about a feminine god rather than a goddess. (A god is masculine so a ‘feminine god’ sounds like a contradiction of a feminine man. If feminine men exist, a contradiction exist or we may conclude that if feminine men exist contradictions are just logical illusions and only exist as the illusional, the illusion).

Well we think of divine beings as ‘angeletic’ (angel like) beings and we think of gods as angels. Angels comes from the Greek ‘angelos’ meaning messenger and the ‘ang’ of angelos one can hear in the Germanic ‘angst’ that pinches your throat when you pronounce it, symbolising the ‘tremendum’ (‘tremor’, fear, trembling) and ‘fascinans’ (fascination). In the ‘ang’ we also hear the French ‘agneau’ (lamb). Monsters are like angels because they are messengers and angels are monsters because they make you fear. Both give an experience of monstrous fear (‘tremendum’) and angeletic fascination (‘fascinans’).

Monsters and angels share a sameness, but a monster is certainly not an angel, although a monster can be ‘angeletic’, and an angel is certainly not a monster, although angels can be monstrous. In our historical time a monster is an evil being (whether it is a higher being than ourselves or belonging to man or an animal or a hybrid as in the movie ‘The fly’) at least in horror movies. An angel is a perfect being and is called holy for its perfect embodiment of subjecting itself perfectly to divine singular Will (that Wills that some spirits embody a transcendent holy idea perfectly in order that those spirits become ‘holy spirits’). Humans need an external universal moral law to bound themselves and that universal law is a general expression of the singular Will, that as a singularity is more concrete that the concrete (acts that have to be subjected to universal moral law) and is more universal than the universal). We have to leave the level of etymology, to that of the higher level of thinking and think what an angel really is. We will define what an angel is in this article in relation to the question of why we are attracted to monstrous horror, horrific monsters.

 

PART II. TRUTHFUL OBJECTIVITY, GOOD MORAL LAW & BEAUTIFUL LITERARY INVENTION

Interlude about the reality as objective literary invention

This chapter can be skipped and you can jump right to the next chapter ‘Angelic Pseudo-Dionysius on the monster and on the angel’. You may read this chapter as the last chapter to be read or not read it at all. This chapter is about the absolute essence of objectivity and explains that both the fiction and horror paradox are subjective contradictions.

Well the fiction and horror paradox came into existence in the Anglo empirical material tradition that has a ‘dogmatic’ stance on reality in the sense that it believes objective reality is objectively real (matter), that reality exists of matter (dark matter or ‘white matter’). In the metaphysical tradition of Anglo-Saxon or continental thinking (or for that matter any metaphysical tradition) these paradoxes do not arise. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) objective reality is an appearance of something absolute and is constituted by the relation the subject has with the absolute, thus objective reality is formed by the subject qua form and qua ‘content’ by the absolute (things in themselves. The Absolute ‘says’ to the subject how it has to form the Absolute in the sense that how the subject has to let the Absolute appear, therefor the subject is in essence an active passivity for the Absolute). Objective reality is not full absolute reality in a Neo-Platonic phrasing and objective reality is unreal compared to absolute reality. Kant also opened the possibility of different kind of objective realities which is reflected in modal logic that defines the necessary true, the absolute truth, as that which is true on all objective world and the contingent as that what is true in one or more (but not in all) worlds.

Roman Ingarten (1893-1970) is part of this (Neo-)Platonic and Kantian tradition that sees objective reality as ‘just’ objective. Absolute reality is not a place where one can life, one can be as a human. Absolute reality is not a world for Ingarten (of whom I know very little and only know via a summary of his works on the website of Stanford University).

 

Intermezzo on the tradition that thinks the unreality of reality as objective invention

Parmenides and even Herakleitos precede Plato in their thought (and experience) that objective reality is not absolute. Parmenides said that objective movement is unreal from the perspective of the absolute, but that movement is objectively true. Parmenides was not understood in his time (and neither in our time). Parmenides was even not understood by Zeno his supposed allied pupil who tried to defend Parmenides by trying to show that the idea of objective movement leads to contradictions and that the ‘unmoveable’ is objectively true. This shows Zeno did not understand Parmenides either and should not be considered a pupil of Parmenides. The unmoveable is absolutely true, but not objectively true and what is unmovable (the Eternal One and eternal souls as part of the Eternal One) shows itself in an objective movement faster than objective speed of movement, thus as faster than light. The Absolute appears in the objective as more than objective. The objective speed of light is connected with ‘life’ and what is faster than light and belongs to the Absolute is connected to ‘spirit’. 

Divine atheists as Nietzsche also know that objective reality is limited and are divine in the sense that they know that objective reality is not absolute reality, as the empirical materialist tradition believes who absolutize the objective as absolute.  However that divine atheism leads to a monstrous subjectivism or relativism in which there is no truth (even not the truth that no truth exists – so this leads to a non-solvable paradox). (To know more on ‘Divine atheism’ and why the Darwinist are mundane atheists go to: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/divine-atheism-bad-i-o-u-james-roolvink/). 

The end of the intermezzo  

 

Objective reality is a literary invention for Ingarten. That means that objective reality is literary, like a piece of art, a musical composition, a book. The reason I discuss Ingarten is that Pseudo-Dionysius speaks of Angels as symbols that are and make holy literary forms (by which we as subjects can compose our objective reality because angels are absolute objectivities that perfectly embody absolute transcendent ideas, but as highest bodies are objective (beings) that live in the world as (total perspectives on the world). I heard the name Ingarten from Dr. Kees Jan Brons who believes in the similarities of the works of Ingarten and mine. After reading a summary on Ingarten I understand why. Ingarten did not translate his thinking, his ontological categories of thinking, into ontological ‘categories’ of time (because he could not see, perceive, the ontological categories in which and by which you can perceive).

One hears the phrase ‘my life is a work of art’ and that is most of the time meant metaphorically by analogy, but in reality it is real for the unreality of a literary work of art really symbolises the unreality of reality.

Ingarten says that a literary work, an invention, reality cannot be material. By a reduction ad absurdum by confirming from the contrary of what is not the case (rather than positively as Kant), Ingarten says that a literary work of art cannot be material: if that would be the case a different chemical composition of the work of art would make the work of art different. A paper book would be different to that ‘same’ book as a digital book and even paper books in general differ in composition. The author would write books each time a copy is made or rather the making of a copy would be original writing. If everything, reality, is material one cannot speak of sameness, identity, transcendent essence. The work of art cannot exist of all was material. If the work of art cannot exist neither can the artist.

(How I present the argument and the order is literary presented by myself and not a non-literary description, a document). So if objective reality exists of absolute transcendent (platonic) essences, eternal unchangeable ideas, have we than found the essence of objective reality? Reasoning back to objective reality from within an absurd conclusion: if objective reality would consist of absolute unchangeable transcendent ideas, the author could not change anything and could not invent a literary work or art. The artist cannot exist if all was absolute. If the artist cannot exist neither can the work of art.

Both unchangeable empirical matter that is different to all other matter (at least by occupying different coordinates in space-time) and unchangeable transcendent ideas of identity are unchangeable. We need something elastic and flexible so ‘spirit’ seems to be the ‘ideal matter’ out of which objective reality may consists of. If a literary art would be reduced to spirit, in the sense of the subjective interpretation of a subject, the psychological experience, the emotions there would be as many different literary works of art of the same identical literary work of art as there are readers and that is just absurd. The interpretation would be the invention of the work. If all would be spirit the work of art could not exist or the perceiver of the work of art would be the artist. If the work of art cannot exist neither can the artist exist. 

‘Spirit’ and ‘matter’ are two sides of the same subjective coin and are the same in the sense that they both stand over and against the absolute. The ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’ both are too subjective in the sense of too much ‘difference’, non-identity. The absolute is too identical, too much the same.

Objective reality is defined negatively as not subjective neither absolute, as not non-identical neither identical. Objective reality is defined seemingly positively as both identical and non-identical. Is objective reality more identical or more non-identical? Objective identity is more identical than non-identical for the difference is defined as non-identical and the identical is not defined as the non-difference. Objective reality is about difference in sameness, the other in the same, a non-identical identity. (Objective reality as a non-identical identity is monstrous because the monster is defined as a non-identical identity as we will show in ‘Part III’).

That same old same identity however is not a logical ‘subjective’ identity. The logical identity is pure subjective illusion, a contradiction, and I would like to reserve the word ‘identity’ for logical identity, the mere subjective I as an empty thought of nothing (a formal logical identity that is under the illusion that that empty identity can create something out of nothing by believing the empty nothing thought of nothing is something (material), and the word ‘same’ for the objective identity. I want to reserve these words solely in Part II of this article.

Identity is not identical to the same as ‘= ≠ is’ or logic is not the logos. Logic/= is a monstrous, in the sense of false, representation of logos/is. Logic is as monstrous sex and logos as eroticism. With eyes that see only the general because the eyes are determined by logic sex and eroticism may look identical, but if you see they are totally different. Sex and eroticism share a sameness, because sex participates in erotism as a inauthentic form of eroticism. Looking is not identical to seeing. (Sex and eroticism relate to each other as efficiency and meaning relate to each other). The monstrous appears in this context as ugly impoverishment. Ugly identical logic has hardly anything to do with the beautiful logos of sameness, essence. Logic is derived from logos as sex is derived from eroticism. Sex is fallen out of the paradise of eroticism. Logic is a false form of logos. Identity is not-identical to the same and the same is totally different from identity.  

We can conclude that objective reality (as objectivity itself that is the world that is constituted by and from within absolute objectivities, highest beings, angels) is more absolute than subjective, although it is both. Kant speaks of objective reality as objectively constituted rather than subjectively constructed or absolutely created. In that sense Kant as well defines objective reality via a ‘not’: if reality was a construction or a creation that would lead to an absurdity. If reality is a construction how could we explain the absolute appeal moral law or mathematics has on us as subjects (that subject themselves to the absolute)? If reality is just creation and fully determined by the Creator how can we explain our freedom? Yet Kant found a word ‘constituted’. A game is constituted by the rules and the rules determine how much you can play within that game. (You can play more if your play, your game, is about inventing rules, games, playing – which is coming to the real meaning of Herakleitos his famous aphorism on time as child playing counters in a game saying the royal power is that of a child – because he reinvents objective reality itself and the more when some of these counters are representing the divine beings themselves).

I like to speak of invention because it has the connotation of change, freedom, the dynamic while a constitution as the connotation of some unchangeable constitution, law. (I prefer the dynamic over the static probably because Herakleitos streams in the stream of my blood in which I can only step once). The word ‘invention’ can only be used if you remember not to identify it with subjective construction. An invention in Triz is defined as the objective solution to a subjective contradiction as the form of a problem. A contradiction is between subjective matter (passive passivity non-willing) and subjective spirit (passive active willing). (For the best introduction on Triz, that is rooted in Engels, Hegel and Herakleitos, go to: https://www.xtriz.com/publications/AccelerateInnovationWithTRIZ.pdf. Triz is about to timeless-temporary opposites in which you can discover time and thus the eternal). So an active passive invention (absolute Will in the will of the subject) is besides being creative and active also passive in the sense that it is a reaction to a subjective problem. In solving the subjective problem the subject has to make himself or herself actively passive for the absolute in order to find the objective solution. Inventions are bound by moral law…by a constitution.

Objectivity, objective reality, is lawlike. The law refers to something absolute and the literary work of art, the artful invention, refers not to the subject and mere subjective, but refers to the objective relation subject has with the absolute because the absolute relates itself absolutely to the subject in order that the subject can relate objectively to the absolute. The law is a lawful literary invention, (a dream governed by certain (invented) laws. You can act morally or immorally in a dream. Objective literary invention as we shall say is made possible by absolute objective holy literary symbols).    

Objective reality is more absolute than subjective more dynamic than static more a literary invention than a constitution. As a literary invention, art, it can be a musical composition. (This article will not discuss the hierarchy of the arts, but I give the following hierarchy (from high to higher) of the essence of art: beauty, sublime nature, beautiful moral law, sublime genius and the holy). Listening to music subjectively retention and protention, remembering and anticipating are ways to hear, but with an absolute ear the whole composition, the whole of the musical ‘piece’ (of a whole tradition of musical compositions), is present and you only have to remember the whole: the trinity of past-present-future does not exist. Objective reality is an actual-past, that is a past that is actual. (For more on the objectivity of time go to: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/doing-business-history-making-your-james-roolvink/). (The actual-past is a subjective objective and eternity is the absolute. Objective time is the objective continuity of absolute objective moments, time as a continuity of synchronicity, thus time is a duration. In music you can hear the future notes not due the tendencies in the present, but because you can remember the future, the whole of the musical composition, the whole of your time, your totality).

Objective reality is both material spiritual and transcendent.

 

Objectivity = ((interior) law > invention) > (invention > (exterior) law)

(18-4-2019, Amsterdam). Objectivity and object we identify with a word for object in German, namely ‘Gegenstand’, which in English literary means ‘opposition’ or even ‘resistance’. Objectivity means reality is not your ‘solipsistic’ construction. The object is that what is opposed to you even if you as a subject have formed the object, via your relation with the Absolute that determines (the not-form, the content, the matter, that what the object really is as a thing in itself regardless how I form it for myself), qua form and even if your empirical self-conscious, your body as object, is dependent and determined how the transcendental subject, that is called transcendental in making the empirical sensible body and its experience possible, is in opposition with the object, yes even then the object resists your forming faculties. The object resists by an appeal to divine law (that you can hear as an a priori universal moral law). You may only form an object in the way it wants you to form it, meaning all objects are in essence subjects (with their forming capabilities that can be so great that they can hide them and appear as dead things. It is the reason why Herakleitos said that all things are ‘spirits’ (higher or lower etc.)).

So the relation between a subject and ‘object’ is the relation between a subject and subject and needs to be understood from the ‘dialogue’ thus in respecting the other and seeing that other can be a representative of the Absolute as well even if you do not agree with that other. The other needs to be approached in the way that other wants to be approached and that means you have to think, via the Absolute One, the One formal Cause, from within the other and that other will open up to you. Once you know the other from within the other him or herself the dialogue is that of silence. There is no need to speak anymore.

In objectivity, the opposition, the resistance of reality the other is not a dead thing. Reality is a literary invention, but the inventing is bound be the law, (transcendent a posteriori) divine law (that is adapted for each singular subject and situation). If you transgress that bound, you use others to fabricate the story of reality, your story, that best suits yourself, you break the law and exchange objectivity for subjectivity. Reality is not a dream because of the law, thus in dreams you can act morally, that is you can act with real consequences for yourself and others. Reality is dreamlike and dreams are real.

In treating another subject for you own means and you deny the other and yourself an objective free relation with each other. The dragon is the symbol of a spirit that can make all its wishes come true. The symbol of spirit is the snake and the dragon is a snake that ate itself, the effect of the Ouroboros. For the dragon there is no other (subject), there is no love, no Absolute One. For the dragon there is no sense even if it can satisfy all its sensible wishes. If you allow children to get what they want they become tyrants. The dragon must let itself be killed be Saint Joris the killer of dragons who is the symbol of the archangel Mikail.

Law, sense (as the experience of sense, the Good, the Absolute as the One (in how the One is turned to us appearing as the Subject)) and objectivity are the same and precede objects. The external law in the centre of all objects and the centre is more outside the object than the object is outside itself, so objects are in the centre, their essence, in law-space. The hierarchical order is: The One (Absolute appears for us as Subject, Person, the Good), the Good (essence of sense, the ‘es-sense’, experienced as the interior transcendent a posteriori singular law, ‘dharma’), the (external a priori universal) law, sense. The external law bounds the body and the interior law speaks is heard directly by the soul.

The faculty of invention, your imagination, is higher than the exterior law because it needs to apply that universal law to a general-concrete situation. The interior law (given each moment by the One) is higher than your imagination, the power to dream, for it says what and why you may dream and for whom and even whether you may dream or not. The highest dream is that the One, who dreams all dreamers, dream in you, dreams in your dreams. If you dream the highest dream almost all your dreams, wishes, stop and dreamers who cannot dream the dream they are dreaming to how they dream it may come to you as a dream doc, a whish doctor. The highest dream is that you have killed your power of imagination, killed your dragon, the symbol of Satan, by the law. You are not your dream, you are not the power to dream because the soul appears in dreams as a dreamer, a power to dream.

To silence all dreams sounds strange in these dreamless times in which we are dreamt by what imitates dreams, live, namely technology. Technology is a dream of the dreamer, but the dreamer is dreaming that the dream is dreaming the dreamer.  In these times it seems to be the external law to follow your passion, your dream and if you fail you are a coward and if you do not even discover your dream you are a complete loser that has to dream someone else his or her dream. In the world there are many dragons that steal dreams from dreamers.        

 

 

PART III. ABSOLUTE SOLUTION TO THE PARADOXES & EXPLAINING OBJECTIVITY TO SUBJECTS

A

Pseudo-Dionysius solves the debate between Aristoteles, Carroll & Freeland on defining horror

(14-4-2019, Amsterdam). The debate on defining horror is centred on the answer to the question ‘what is a monster?’. For Carroll monsters must be supernatural, of a higher nature than the nature of man, and evil. The supernatural is defined by what is supernatural by the current state of contemporary science. The supernatural appears in the natural, the physical, for our logical understanding as a mixture of what is normally distinct and grasped in different categories of our understanding or cannot fully ‘subsumed’ under one category due incompleteness.

For Freeland the monster is in essence evil whether supernatural or natural is not important for a monster to be a monster allowing Hannibal the Cannibal types of natural persons be monsters. For Carroll these persons and stories fall under the category not of horror, but that of terror. For Freeland terror is horror meaning that for her horror is in essence terror.

 

Aristotle

According to Aristotle a monster is a freak of nature, an accident like making a spelling mistake or slipping over a banana. Aristotle gives a ‘supernatural’ example of Empedocles of a cow with the head of a man, but he probably wanted to make clear what a mistake is by using hyperbolical exaggeration. It makes clear a mixing of categories, man and animal in this case.  A mixing less mind-boggling in his thinking because it refers to an original concept of chaos, an experience (of chaos that cannot be conceptualised), that still had a faint echo in Aristotle’s time, certainly when you see the chaos as how the transcendent can appear for a logical rational understanding. Secondly in Aristoteles thinking what makes man and an animal different is ‘thinking’ or to put it differently for Aristotle man is a thinking animal (‘animal rationale’), an animal that can speak, a divine animal. The thinking and speaking are an ‘add-on’ a man as an animal 2.0, rather than that the rational is embedded in man. (Compare this with ICT infrastructure: security as an add-on on a network or as embedded in the network). Both animals and man and all beings exist of ‘psuchè’ (‘psyche’) that is spiritual life-force in in the way that life-force, the material, is directed by and towards the god, the One form, determines how that life-force is formed, into a stone, plant, insect, tree animal or thinking animal (man). Man and animal do not differ fundamentally in that respect and in that context animals with human features (domesticated dogs) a or humans with animal features (people with lots of hair or who are very strong).

 

The impersonal material life-force that is formed by the formal Cause

One can say that the soul as personality is for Aristotle non-other than how the spirit (pure matter), that appears as body in the body as life-force, is directed, orientated to the one god. One can say that the spirit, who is formed by how it is directed to the god (by the god (and for Aristotle there is only one god)), forms the body and appears in the body as life-force.

 

The ontological status of life, spirit and soul

(27-5-2019, Amsterdam).  If that life-force is formed by the form of the body (the body being its form -so do not associate the form of the body with the spatial form of the body that is an effect of they form of the body as how life is formed by the spirit, your spirit) you are saying by analogy that spirit is formed by the body, by life, that something lower rules on what is higher. That is impure. If that is the case the spirit, your spirit, allows life to rule itself (and considers life as a goal in itself).

Life and spirit are opposed in this way. An opposition that can be solved if you define life as non-spirit rather than that spirit is non-life. Life is the delay of spirit, slow delusional spirit, that makes itself slower. Another possible solution is that life, the body, is faster than spirit and the reason why spirit cannot escape from life. If that is the solution it is the god that is present in life as a faster spirit than your spirit. Life is what appears to you if the god relates to your spirit. And spirit appears to you if the god (but at this point I certainly would like to speak of ‘God’) relates Himself to your soul, thus relates Himself to a part of Himself. That makes spirit, time, movement the effect of the relation between Eternal God and an eternal soul and relates as spirit the ensouled body to God. The Eternal God is not faster than the eternal soul because what is eternal does not move so God appears as faster than the soul in the spirit. Even if you see God as faster, as Spirit, and see the soul as slower, as spirit, that fact of different speeds, the difference, shows something transcendent, the Eternal.

The end of the intermezzo

 

(14-4-2019, Amsterdam). Anyway the soul is qua what it is impersonal spirit and qua how it is person, thus the soul is not (a) transcendent (idea as in Plato). In this respect Aristotle had an ‘evolutionary’ idea of pure matter, spirit, that could evolve from animal to an animal with more rational capabilities. A freak of nature as a being in between an animal and a thinking animal. That freak of nature is in reality not necessarily a freak, but can be in-between-life-form.

 

The monster as a freak and the freak as a malfunctioning

(27-5-2019, Amsterdam). Picture, as Darwin, animal with blind non-functional eyes that after a long time can function properly to see. (For Darwin this was an argument against the idea of evolution as determined by the survival of the fittest because non-functioning eyes do not seem to have any advantage in surviving. If the eye did not need a long time, longer than many individual instances of a species, to evolve that speed could not be explained by Darwin for instant evolution in which a long time span is consolidated in just a part of one life of an individual presupposed ‘divine intervention’).

In horror stories a freak can be more than just a malfunction of certain organs, but is truly expressed when certain organs take over functions of other organs, that malfunction or are not present. Once I knew a ‘Polish’ mystic whose main artery to his heart did not work and other arteries took over that function. Once I saw that some people had a skull that was almost filled with just air and had a few brains scattered, seemingly unconnected with each other, in the inside of the skull, but who could function perfectly well in society for their brain as parts of the brain took over the function of what is normally considered a full brain. In an idiot savant, for example someone who can calculate large calculations instantly, it seems one part of the brain functions too well that while other parts function less good than normal (maybe because that malfunctioning is caused by the abnormal functioning of the abnormal freaky part). A whole brain, a whole body, does not function well all parts are not functioning well.

Freaks are abnormal not paranormal. The abnormal can be a more than normal as in the X-men. The X-men are abnormal natural monsters not paranormal supernatural monsters. The X-men are freaks. 

 

Aristotle’s monster part I: the monster malfunctions, is malformed and not fully actualised

(14-4-2019, Amsterdam). This in between form can be on the basis of what we know currently appear as monstrous, but may be a more evolved animal than we have seen until now. That would mean that a monster is only a monster because we do not understand the nature of that being.

That might be a little too Darwinist an interpretation for Aristotle. It does not really contradict Aristotle’s thinking, but what also does not contradict Aristotle’s thinking is the idea that the God in forming material life-forces forms them and after they are formed they belong to a certain type, specie (that determines the form of the body), category. So an animal may evolve within his type, but cannot evolve into another animal and can certainly not evolve into a human. That is probably historical closer to Aristotle’s thought.  A monster cannot be an in-between-form-of-life for that would mean that you have ‘species’ in between species, that is lives that are not formed by species or formed by two species at the same time. Not to be formed not to have a function and not to have a function means that you cannot function at all and not function well.

Moreover a monster is a freak for Aristotle and by freak he means a being that does not function well, whose body is not functional in respect to the goal that that being is being allotted to by the God. A Siamese twin or a someone with the down syndrome is a monster according to that teleological definition in which a being’s function, how that being is orientated in and to nature, is determined by a final cause that gives that being its purpose. (In this version a monster is not an-in-between life form, but a non-well-functioning life form). If so called well functioning healthy people make a mistake that mistake is monstrous and if it is a big mistake they can make themselves permanently handicap. The difference between being handicap at birth or afterwards is only gradual and not necessary categorical. A difference between non-functioning organs that function badly and functioning organs that function badly. In the next chapter the final cause is explained in more detail. (The difference between a non-functional organ that functions bad and a well-functioning organ that functions bad).

 

 

Three aspects of the One formal Cause, the Go(o)d & a theory on time

Each being consists is caused and that cause has four aspects. A being exists of pure matter, the material cause, that is in terms of Aristotle something purely flexible, sheer potentiality, because matter can be formed in any shape that is less flexible. Pure matter is a theoretical concept (for material understanding) that cannot be perceived (by ordinary perception that is determined by material understanding) and beings and objects we see are already formed matter and in most cases lost the pure flexibility and are hard and impenetrable. Pure matter could be pictured as spirit or energy (life-force), as something very flexible, and can be Seen (with holy spiritual eyes, ‘transcendent eyes’). (Fluid we experience in life as flexible). 

Matter is formed or in terms of Aristotle ‘actualised’ into a material form, formed matter. The (One) form is the transcendent ‘Platonic’ idea that for our knowing cannot be independent of matter, but can in itself existent independent of matter, the material. Aristotle speaks in regards to this aspect of the one formal cause as the ‘formal cause’. (Actually he speaks of a plurality of formal causes, but when he speaks of the one god one can conclude that these formal causes are one formal cause, the god).  

That transcendent eternal idea appears in the material, time, as the (plurality of) final causes that causes a matter to be what it should be from the future. In ‘The Terminator’ a hand of a robot appears in the present from the future allowing the people in the present to reverse engineer that hand and invent robots & time travel. A chicken egg, that is still quite unformed and material, is caused from the future, by a final cause, to become a chicken or rooster, but not a horse. (Pure matter as the stem cell of stem cells). That final cause determines into which type, species, the specific material (spiritual) life-force will belong. (Translated to Pseudo-Dionysius angels are these final causes meaning that the workings of angels is like the workings of final causes). 

(18-4-2019, Amsterdam). Finally we have the ‘mechanic cause’. In my judgment the mechanical cause in which the ‘flow of time’ is from the past to the present, an effect that is caused by a past cause, an illusion and reversal, via the mirror of the timeless, of the final cause in which the ‘flow of time’ is from the future to the present, or rather from eternity to the present in which the past is also present (for you as static eternity that can dynamically change due the present, that is freedom itself, because in the present you may choose for eternity, time or the timeless. The past is present whether you like it or not and has its effect in the present because the past is part of eternity and eternity actualises the present into actuality, as if the past is coming from the future (in order that you can be aware of your past, see it and clean it)). (If eternity is the present that presents, actualises, the past, (the question is how a past can become a past), then the past, time, is part of eternity, a part of God. If the soul is a part of God and the past, time, is a part of God than the soul and the past, time, are identical. Soul is time and time is part of eternity, God, and is eternal. We also said that time is spirit, so soul is spirit (and the soul cannot be for itself without spirit. Time is the effect of eternity in the timeless. Spirit is the effect of God in a part of itself. The timeless is a limited part of what is unlimited).   

The mechanical cause is how the final cause appears in the timeless. The mechanical cause is how the appearance of eternity in time appears in the timeless. Does that make time not the appearance of eternity in the timeless? No! Time is the appearance of eternity in the timeless and if you focus on eternity you will experience time (and eternity and its effect as final cause, your will experience the natural organic ‘flow’), but if you focus on the timeless you will experience a timeless time, the mechanical, the mechanical cause. (In time/spirit there is a fundamental choice to make between eternity and the timeless).

 

Aristotle’s monster part II: the evil monster is not fully aware of its Good destiny

(14-4-2019, Amsterdam). The question is why a being is not functioning well. The Siamese twin might not itself be a monster for Aristotle, but what is represents, the monstrous, the malfunction might be the monster. Aristotle’s ontology, world-view, does not seem to have a place for divine beings, like daemons, between man and the One God, that could explain the malfunction of beings that should function properly. If that would be the case evil daemons might interfere in the way a life-force makes itself actively passive (which implies that that life-force is already ensouled) to be attracted from above and the future by a final cause in order to be formed, actualised, so and so as this particular being. If no evil daemons exist it might be evil humans or the (ensouled life-force) of that being itself (which makes a Siamese twin to be really an evil monster) or just an unlucky accident.

But the Greeks and especially Aristotle did not like contingent accidental happenings. For Aristotle’s teleological outlook it would be strange that accidents happen and would make Almighty God a god, of which there could still be one, but one that is not omnipotent. From Aristotle’s the theory of truth that states that a proposition (‘a Siamese twin is not a monster’ or ‘2 + 2 = 4’ or ‘de god is omnipotent’) is either true or untrue, we can conclude that everything is predestined what can be clearly seen if this proposition is about the future. ‘Tomorrow the sun is going to shine’ is either true or untrue, but in any case the future is already predestined. (That does not mean you are not free, but as a temporal being you are not, allowing the possibility that in so far you are eternal you are free to determine determined time as if you yourself would be ((the perfect) embodiment of a) a final cause (that is an angel as an aspect of the God, The Eternal)).

In the Greek myth of Oudipous (‘Oedipus’) which does not only convey a true essence, but could actually be true the relation between freedom and predestination are thought together as one. In short: you are free in the way you cope with what is destined for you, whether your body will be damaged or not a long the way depending on how conscious you are on and of your destiny, and you determine how far you can travel on you predetermined destiny. Evil is or occurs when you are not aware of your destiny. That destiny is always Good, with a capital ‘G’, for your soul (whether the ontological status of the soul may be), so evil comes about when you are not fully conscious of the Good, God, and your way to the Good is delayed. That is a Platonic way of reasoning in which evil as no existence in itself and is considered as a lesser Good. Aristotle teacher was Plato so this is not accident and I personally judge Aristotle to be much more Platonic than most scholars believe. (When external argument for that is that the Neo-Platonist draw inspiration on both Plato and Aristotle).

This all shows at least two things. One: there are no happy or unhappy accidents, for the world is ruled by necessity. Accidents can be explained by not being conscious of God. Two: to define what a monster is, or anything for that matter (like a person with a handicap), brings us right into the deepest ontology, that what is implied in physics of nature, and what is described in ontology, metaphysics, namely the structure of reality. This gives you a freedom to think about phenomenon’s, as that of the monster, and not be disturbed by ‘political correct thinking’.

 

 

Aristotle’s monster part III: final conclusion: pity & ugliness and revulsion and evil

If I had to make a conclusion I would say that for Aristotle the monster is a life-force whose potentiality is not fully actualised, whose matter is not formed in the right way. The monster is malformed, deformed, is ugly. That is why we feel pity for the monster according to Aristotle. That malformation finds cause in a an evil and that gives a reaction of revulsion. Whether the life-force is free before it is formed, determined, by the final causes, the God or free after it is formed does not stop us from feeling a disgusting loathing revulsion, but may determine the intensity of the revulsion.

That the ugly and evil were identified to be one for many Greek thinkers who were expressing their culture. Socrates, the teacher of Plato, was an anomaly for he was ugly, but was good and even more than good, a daemonic divine (holy) man. Socrates his ugliness combined with his Goodness, his holy soul, emancipated the ugly from evil and opened the way to the transcendent (Go(o)d and the truth of One God that is One without any gods existing, accepts when you consider gods as angels). Socrates could not free evil from ignorance in reducing evil to ignorance (of the transcendent) for to be ignorant of the evil is the effect of evil as being occupied with yourself.

 

Extra: Sophocles transforms the monster Oudipous into a hero

Being a monster is tragic. We feel pity for (the soul of) Oudipous who was predestined (against his intentions) to kill his father and make children with his mother and feel revulsion for his acts because they are his. If Oudipous would have been more aware of the Good that would not avoid these repulsive acts, but he would be aware that he would be an instrument of the gods, the Go(o)d, and would know why he had to kill his impure father and why he had to make children with his mother. You are free in knowing the Reason, the Why, the Necessity, of it all, but are pre-determined in what you do, the What and that freedom is in the heart of the predestination and shines through in how you do what you do.  

The genius of Sophocles (in my African judgement), who made the best version of the myth according to Aristotle, is that he allowed Oudipous to transcendent his fate as a monster and became a hero in overcoming his impure blood in which the gods consolidated all evil ‘impurifying’ acts of his ancestors as a divine challenge for the soul of Oudipous to overcome, given as a gift by the gods.

Oudipous won from his blood, his ancestors, his past and actualised his true potential, his soul, and became a Seer full of hero-power after he got the numen, as sign, directly from the god Apollo who revealed to sacrifice his eyes with the pins of the garments of his mother who he just discovered killed herself (when she discovered, much too late because she did not want to see the truth, that Oudipous was her son). In killing herself she cleaned her blood that was stained by impurity. Her sacrifice was to kill herself, save her honour, save her soul.

That is not a punishment as modern scholars falsely believe due the immoral evil repulsive acts, these scholars believed Oudipous could have avoided, but a sacrifice to overcome his lack of awareness, wisdom, ability to see (although Oudipous wanted desperately to See unlike his mother who looked away). Oudipous soul saw the impurity of his blood and that seeing purifies, but with the sacrifice that purification accelerated and could bring Oudipous faster to his divine heroic destiny. We do not feel pity and repulsion in victory, but feel awe for the Good in the gods and feel awe for Oudipous. We feel the divine, the holy, the more than holy, God.

Hero’s belong to the divine world for the Greeks and the life of Oudipous in killing his father and sleeping with his mother resembles the ‘life’ of the gods for who these acts are allowed and not necessarily not allowed. The killing of the father is the symbol or transcendence and sleeping with your mother the symbol of transcendence in the immanent. In recognizing his divine heroism, his divine soul, his repulsive impure acts became divine. Oudipous needed to clean his body by sacrificing his eyes, but not his holy soul. Oudipous needed to clean his body because his soul ensouled his body, his body is an ensouled body as embodied soul, because his divine soul could have been more divine.   

Sophocles was only faintly aware of all this by contemplating hardly on the myth of Oudipous and hearing feeble echoes of the truth. Sophocles had a silent knowledge, that stayed silent for himself, and expressed that in making Oudipous a king and a Seer who could help is good pitiful fellow men and evil pitiful repulsive fellow men for Oudipous became beyond good and evil, namely divine holy. Oudipous was not a child and king of coincidence, accident, as he believed he was, but the son of a king and queen, and Oudipous acted like a king because he is a king and therefor he got the kingdom. You are an eternal soul therefor you act as an ensouled spirit and will posses a certain body. Being, acting/becoming and having that is the right hierarchy.

A true king is a Seer who sees that kingship is a holy power for the true king is a hero, but a Seer is not necessarily a king. Seer kings have power, but Seers are powerless. Seers see destinies of themselves and others, but do not have the power to change them. Those with power can make you See your destiny sooner and can make you travel further on your destiny, but can even change the what, can change destinies because that power is the power of the Go(o)d that is called upon man of power and works through man of power. Translated in the spirit of Pseudo-Dionysius these men, incarnated angels, as man can command the non-incarnated angels. Two of them are present today in this world.

It is not the case that you are free and can relate to the Omnipotent Go(0)d, but only in participating in omnipotence you are free and it is omnipotence that allows you to participate.

 

No?l Carroll’s impure unclean monster

Carroll is inspired by the anthropologist Mary Douglas’s book ‘Purity & danger’ in which the impure is (in some cases) defined by a phenomenon that should fall within one category, but actually falls under another. ‘Sperm’ should fall in the category ‘inside’ and should be inside the testicles of a man or inside a woman, but when the sperm is seen outside the body the sperm loses the purity it has and becomes impure, making impure that what it touches and even the whole space in which it is. From this book Carroll draws the idea of a monster as something impure described by the categorical interstitial of which the mixing of categories is a form of the categorical interstitial. One could say that sperm itself is the embodiment of the category ‘inside (the body’ and when sperm is outside the body it is both inside and outside. That state of sperm outside the body can exist, but for Carroll monsters do not exist (and if they do exist they are not monsters anymore so a monster is defined epistemological and not ontological).

Carroll is inspired by the idea of the impure in religion, but monsters simply do not exist for Carroll. Carroll could reason along these lines: the impure seem more real than real because it combines a plurality of pure categories of the real.

 

 

Intermezzo on the holy & the difference between blood, sperm and excrements

Cleanness or purity is an essential element in religion:

 James 2017 based on work of 2007. See: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/craft-making-clear-venn-diagrams-james-roolvink/

 

Carroll does not seem to understand religion, although from a theological perspective one could use Carroll’s concept of the monster to clarify the religious category of the impure/unclean. Carroll also makes clear that if science does not recognize the category of the impure it cannot recognize the category of the pure and can necessarily not recognize religion that he must necessarily be seen as primitive. A higher rationality is seen as irrationality. (Make a difference between the rules of science and individual scientist that practice science and who can be religious). When as an individual you are using (however implicit in an emotional reaction of disgust for example) the category of the impure (that can be evoked by unclean excrements) you are part of a religious dimension, however implicit that dimension may be for you.

(27-5-2019, Amsterdam). Blood is not white sperm, but sperm is red sperm in the sense that the sperm comes from the blood rather than vice versa. The blood the spirit, the white bones the soul, the pink flesh the body and the white sperm the spiritual soul as the ensouled spirit (for man is created from inspirited a clot of dust that became fluid blood).

How can we understand that spirit is more primary than sperm? By saying the same, repeating, in other words. To understand a piece of music one has to repeat the same composition not necessarily on different interpretations, but can repeat from one interpretation and that one interpretation will be the ground for other interpretations of that same composition.

Blood refers to the supernatural escapes the natural categories of inside and outside and when blood is seen outside the profane body, on the profane body or on the floor, on a napkin, the supernatural as a symbol of the transcendent is in the mundane that still shows the invincibility of the transcendent, the holy. Blood is sacred and only if that scared blood is not impurified by impurity can you experience the holy.

The blood of menstruation is not unclean for a woman, but unclean for a man to touch, not because the blood or the woman is necessarily unclean, but rather because if the man is profane touching the blood is dangerous for the higher, the sacred, can destroy the lower, the profane. Clean-unclean are sometimes used to denote a relation (between a man and woman or woman between themselves). The inside is the ‘place’ of ownership, of self, and what is more inside than the inside owns the inside.

Unclean is to mix blood and excrements and can be described in the mixing of categories and seen, experienced, if you see that mix. In dark forms of evil magic one works with excrements. This should not be confused with ‘Black magic’ which is called ‘Black’ because that is the colour of transcendence, the colour of the unknown, from the perspective of the natural. From the perspective of the supernatural it can be the ‘tone’ of many different natural colours and is seen in all the supernatural colours. ‘Black magic’ works primarily with the One God who is One, white magic works with angels and good spirits and dark evil magic works with evil spirit. Both black and white can appear to the profane mundane people as evil and primitive. In ‘Black magic’ everything is possible and even doing black (holy) magic with excrements.   

 

 

The current state of science and scientific pure categories that define what a monster is

(14-4-2019, Amsterdam). In quantum mechanics mixing of categories is what almost defines this science: actual-potential, wave-particle etc.. A material particle can be described as a energetic wave as shown by Louis De Broglie (1892-1987) showed, but not vice versa. Something can be partially actual. In superposition something can have contradicting qualities at the same time. The category of not-mixing is changed for the category of mixing. This science implies mixing is possible.

Carroll could argue that what is mixed is only the natural. That all kinds of mixing within the natural is possible may in the future allow for a man that is becoming a fly to be possible and executed by genetic manipulation. The powers of the X-men are genetically brought about and are not supernatural.

 

Monsters of mixed natural categories: the fly, Frankenstein, robots…

In the movie ‘The fly’ a man is both a man and a fly and the man transforms more and more into a fly (and the contradiction between the man and fly is resolved, although the largeness of the man is ‘preserved’). A big fly or bird or ant etc. do fall under two categories, that of its species (fly, bird, ant etc.) and of a species that is much larger (a man, an elephant, a wale etc.). Someone with a very disproportionate large head is a monster. In ‘El labirinto del Fauno’ (by Guillermo Del Toro 2006) a monster can see with its eyes when it puts its eyes in his hands and hands before his face. That is a mixture of two categories, namely that of a well-functioning hand and well-functioning eyes.

A faun is the symbol of life itself and is the life of life, is life objectified in living alive being and is not a mixing of categories but rather a exaggeration of one category, namely that of life. The X-men, genetically different forms of life, are an approximation of the symbol of the faun.  

 

Monsters of mixed supernatural categories: ghosts & nephilim…

A ghost is a dead spirit, a spirit that is not ensouled. Both spirit and soul are supernatural in relation to life. In the living body the spirit appears as life-force, thus as a category of life, and the soul appears as the form of the living body, the soul appears as the whole(ness) of the body, thus as a category of life.

Carroll cannot see that (let alone how) the supernatural appears in the natural. So when the body gets wounded and deformed the soul gets wounded and becomes ugly if you think consequently in the line of Carroll and all false materialistic philosophers. Someone can be ugly being a beautiful soul! Look at Socrates with his ugly nose…but because his soul is so beautiful, for the Good shines through the soul as beauty, I cannot see the ugliness of the nose anymore and see a beautiful nose, I see a soul, and in the soul I see the Good.

According to Carroll a spirit must be a dead life, a dead person because he cannot see that a spirit is more alive than someone who is alive, yet the spirit has less possibilities to develop the soul when it is not an embodied soul in life, surrounded by life. The reason for Carroll is that the supernatural does not exist and is an illusion that comes about by the mixing of natural categories (being completed by more than one category) or not falling under one category (being incomplete). So for Carroll ‘death’ is a natural category and believe in the supernatural a confusion, a mixing of categories. A monster existing of different animals is not more real, but unreal for Carroll. Carroll cannot really make the distinctions between the mixing of the categories of life and death (as the not-life):

Frankenstein is made of parts, that are made alive again by electricity, and looks like a robot. Frankenstein is the symbol of a human without a whole, without a soul, yet Frankenstein is ‘partly’ whole, partly soul. A robot is not really a monster because it is made of dead parts and acts only as if it is alive. Only if you cannot think clearly you might think robots can be alive and that is related to thinking man is a (chemical) machine as well. Within a story a robot can be said to be alive and the mixing of categories is that something is both (mead of) dead (parts) and is yet alive. Robots exist of dead part that make a whole life. Frankenstein exists of many parts that have (potential) life that make a whole life. Both the monstrosity of robots and Frankenstein exist of the mixing of the categories of part and whole by mixing, applying, the category of the whole to that of the parts. For Carroll the soul does not exist and is the effect, an epiphenomenon, of parts, so for Carroll the whole is not a supernatural category as if life spontaneously forms wholes.

 

A nephilim is not an angel, a highest being, that procreated with a humane female as the Christians believe, but a nephilim is a male djinn that procreated with a human female. A nephilim is a higher being that procreated with a lower being. That mixing is impure because the higher manipulates the lower. Not al mixing is impure, as Carroll believes, because a human male that procreates with a female djinn can be more than pure, namely holy. The mixing is not impure because the lower qua being attracts the higher qua being, but there is a sameness because the lower being ‘man’ is the highest of the lower beings and qua the quality, eternal transcendent idea, ‘highest’, man is higher than the quality of the ‘higher’ of the higher being, but djinn are the highest of the higher beings, thus qua quality man and djinn are the same. For Carroll only the lower beings exist.

 

 

Monsters of mixed natural and supernatural categories: the zombie…Monsters as missing a crucial category: the vampire…

A vampire is natural in the sense that it is a man and supernatural in the sense that it is a ghost. A vampire is a man with spirit, a life-force, but without his own soul. 

What about ensouled vampires? They have souls insofar they are man and have not spirit of their own and that is the reason why they need to drink the blood of others in which the can extract the spiritual life-force out of their blood. Maybe vampires are all ensouled. If that is the case we could also define a vampire as an incomplete human, a body without its own life-force. 

Monsters that do not fall completely under one category

A hand that acts as if it is an independent whole body. An amorphous unconscious blob that is not well-formed, not completely actualised.

 

Cynthia Freeland

She is ethically occupied by ethics. She asks questions whether is morally right to feel pity with an evil monster. For her monsters are evil, but she does not see that evil is supernatural. Hannibal the Cannibal has no supernatural power, just some enhanced capabilities in psychological insight, intelligence, but is a complete monster for Freeland. (19-4-2019, Amsterdam). (Personally I would say that evil itself is supernatural, but then again freedom itself, and for that matter everything, has a transcendent cause).

A point of critique against Freeland could be that if evil itself is not supernatural natural human monsters are just naturally determined to exhibit evil behaviour and are themselves not evil. It is a reasoning seen in courts: the perpetrator was determined in his evil acts by a (temporary) brain damage so he or she is not found guilty. In naturalizing the supernatural the higher physical is made physical and the physical purely as physical and freedom is destroyed. Without freedom there is no evil and without evil there are no monsters. (Evil is choosing for oneself (ones body) and good is choosing for another (soul) and holy is choosing for God and thus for your soul). Thus in recognizing evil one must be logical consistent and recognize the supernatural and supernatural monsters as well!

 

Freeland & Carroll

We could conclude that a monster is supernatural whether a supernatural supernatural monster or a supernatural natural monster. Carroll is right in saying that horror must be identified with (evil) supernatural (supernatural) monsters and Freeland is right is calling monsters evil. Carroll says evil is part of the essence of horror, the monster, but is not a sufficient condition to be able to speak of horror. For Freeland evil is the necessary and sufficient condition to speak about horror and as we have read for Carroll that is true in regards to terror.

So who is more right? Is there a ‘more right’ or is it just a word game? Can we not solve the this discussion by making a distinction between supernatural and natural horror or by making the distinction between horror and terror as Carroll proposes? The right names to the right places. The ‘Rectification of the names’ as Confucius called this. And the Buddha called it ‘right speech’ as speaking the right words to the right person at the right time. Christians speak about solving Babylonian speech confusion when you speak from within the holy spirit (which I consider to be a speech confusion in the sense that a spirit that is totally possessed by an aspect, a transcendent idea, of the One, God, and could be called a ‘holy spirit’ and that Islamic scholars identify the holy spirit as the spirit representing the One primary with the angel Jibril (Gabri-El), probably because his spirit as spirit is holy due the fact that the One has not directed this spirit to a fixed aspect of Himself, a specific transcendent (‘platonic’) idea and is directed to receiving a direction and the totality of all angels in all angels meaning he is the messenger of the One more than any of the other angels, even Mikail (Michael) who is the leader of all angels resembling the One who leads. It is the reason why in Christian angelology Jibril is considered the most feminine looking although all angels are masculine).

Meaning of words is more than their use in a form of life for words, their sounds are meaningful (given from above) symbols (that can sometimes be discovered by looking at their etymological origins), that need to be used in a certain predetermined way. If you do not abide by this and believe the meaning of words consists for the most part in their use (within a praxis as part of a form of live) to call terror horror or call terror not horror but terror is both correct for both uses refer to a distinction between ‘horror’ and ‘terror’.   

Carroll is more right than Freeland, because as we have seen believe in evil is a believe in the supernatural and a believe in supernatural monsters. Terror stands to horror as the secondary (natural) zombie stands to the primary (supernatural) zombie (see diagram above). Terror is horrific, but horror is not terroristic. Terror participates in horror, as the natural participates in the supernatural, and not vice versa. This we can learn from Pseudo-Dionysius and we can learn what the essence, the essential structure, of ‘participating’ is.

 

The uncanny as part of terror rather than horror or…

From within the difference of horror and terror I would define the uncanny as invisible horror. Something is ‘wrong’, but you do not know what. There is a supernatural evil effect in the natural that you cannot interpret the uncanny as being supernatural.

Within the uncanny I make a distinction between the awareness of the uncanny and not being aware of the uncanny that by analogy looks like the distinction between remembering that you have forgotten something (and knowing very vaguely what that something is) and remembering that you have forgotten that you are forgetting something, not knowing at all what that something is. The primary meaning of the uncanny is in which you are not aware of the uncanny.

This primary meaning is portrayed in the cartoon ‘Coraline’ in which a girl finds a parallel world in which she is lured and seduced to stay with artificial kindness from her parallel ‘parents’. (Two natural worlds show the existence of the supernatural). The uncanniness exists in the fact that this parallel world is an imitation of what is considered the real world in that cartoon. One of the visible ‘signs’ of that the parallel world is an (evil) imitation is the fact that the people do not have eyes (to see the real for there is not real reality in imitation), but have dark buttons, knots, at where real people find their eyes. Symbolically: with the buttons, imitation of eyes, you cannot see the imitated world, cannot see imitation.

 

 

Angelic Pseudo-Dionysius on the monster and on the angel

 

Angels as temporal embodiments of transcendent platonic eternal ideas

(21-4-2019, Amsterdam). An angel is a being who is essentially orientated to his universal essence. Pseudo-Dionysius defines an angel, in the spirit of Christian tradition, as a ‘hierarchy’ coming from holy (‘hiero’ of which our word ‘hero’ is derived I am convinced) and principle (‘arche’). An angel is a holy principle. A principle of what? Of the world and that is the reason why I identify the totality of angels of all angels that are in all angels with the world itself in which lower beings, qua being (spirit), than angels exist. Angels are all first principles, but some angels are more primary. The secondary meaning of hierarchy, an ordering in higher and lower, is rooted in this primary meaning of hierarchy as ‘holy principle’.

An angel is as a created being a spirit, but a spirit that is totally possessed by a transcendent universal ‘platonic’ eternal idea, out of which the world is created, so angels embody these transcendent invisible ideas and make them visible. These ideas are created by the One and all ideas are aspects of the first idea, the Good, that is embodied by the angel Mikail. All ideas but the first are created via the one first idea, mediated via that one idea, by the One Almighty Creator. Well ‘via’ in retrospective for the idea out of which all angels and everything is created is the idea that God has of His self and via that idea he creates all angels, but He does not create all angels via Mikail (as the witnesses of Jehovah believe), who embodies that idea. To embody the idea is not being identical to that idea even if Mikail embodies that transcendent invisible idea perfectly in visible form. 

That one holy first principle of holy principles is like a Suisse pocket knife having everything in general, but not in the highest quality (accept the highest quality of the general). This principles of principles is the symbol of the leader, the general and is the leader king if it is embodied in a man. Think of France that has al kind of nature, but of these natures (snow, beaches etc.) in other countries have it in more quality. Angels have a total view on the world and the world can exist these total views, but the views of angels are one-sided, accept that of the angel Mikail, the first of the first principles, that embodies the idea that God has of Himself.

The ideas are eternal, but the spirit is time itself. Time itself is not temporary, but is an eternal time, when and only when it participates in the eternal. We can conclude that angels are ontologically seen mortal (for they are temporary spirits) and the fact that some scholars believe they are immortal is because they confuse angels with the eternal ideas they embody. We call angels spirits that embody eternal transcendent holy ideas perfectly and so they may be called holy spirits. Spirits are (created) beings and that means angels are highest beings. Spirits can participate in different one-sided angeletic perspectives that they can integrate and when spirits are embodied they can enrich their integrated perspectives with more perspectives.  

 

Intermezzo: breaking Heidegger’s enigma

If Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) would have known this he would have solved the riddle of live and could of become a man of wisdom rather than a wise lover of wisdom for he confused God with a highest being calling God the highest being (‘hoogste zijnde’ in Dutch), rather than calling Him the One and knowing the One is the essence of being as being (‘zijn’ in Dutch) versus a being. That false identification of identifying God with the angel made ‘the essence of being, being qua being’ a mystery for the greatest philosopher of the 20th century disabled his vision to see the essence of being as soul and led to the false identification of angels with higher beings in contrast to lower beings (humans, animals…). If God is the highest being the highest beings, angels, become higher beings and higher beings have no place in ontology anymore and must be explained by a malfunction of higher beings who are attracted to lower beings, life. If angels symbolise the holy, higher beings symbolise the spirit and lower beings symbolise life, than if higher beings are removed from the ontological theatre spirit is reduced to life-force and the soul, being as being (that is also no part of an ontology that identifies God, the One as the essence of being as being, with highest being), is reduced to a lower being, the body.  

Heidegger’s ontology is rooted in the Christian tradition and is an expression of it because when God is the highest being, highest beings are higher beings one cannot see what higher beings really are. Higher beings can be divided in highest higher beings (‘djinn’) and lower higher beings (‘spirits’ that have necessarily the same name as ‘spirits’ in the sense of beings in general). With that distinction Satan, Iblis (Lucifer), can be seen in his essence as the highest of the highest higher beings. ‘Satans’ or devils are primary highest higher beings and not fallen angels, fallen highest beings, and secondary one can name beings devils when they do evil. Highest beings cannot fall (not even when these embodiments of eternal ideas are embodied in men). With the right ontology one can see what evil is and is better able to fight it.

The false identification of Heidegger has held philosophy in its grip in feeling the urge to react to Heidegger, by being fascinated by this false identification and thinking along the lines of this identification or by interpreting it as mere wordplay. Ones my writings will be discovered and the Great Work is published the false timeless identification, the Babylonian speech confusion, will be seen and solved. That work will define all beings, the holy ontology, in terms of time…in true Heideggerian spirit. (Some keys are hidden by publishing some keys in articles on LinkedIn. People do not read and due the fact that academic philosophers can steal fundamentally ideas, accidently, I have some prove at publishing some keys I was the originator).

Pseudo-Dionysius does seem to think highest beings cannot fall, but does not explain evil (as evil nor explains evil in platonic mode as a lesser Good, thus a relative evil compared to the Good). Thomas of Acquinas (1225-1275) failed when he believed angels can fall into demons and the Satan being a fallen Cherub. The Christian form of live in which angels can fall makes one very paranoid as a human because if angels can fall chances are very high you will fall as well as a (the highest of the) lower being(s).  

By analogy one can study Greek pre-Socratic and Platonic ontology in which demons (highest higher beings) mediate between men (highest lower beings) and the gods (as the highest beings). In Greek ontology certainly not all demons are evil and it was a false Christian ontology that necessarily translated demons into evil fallen angels. This does most certainly not dismiss Christianity, on the contrary. Evil (d)evils manipulated translators of holy texts and manipulated philosophers. It is the reason why friends of wisdom, philosophers, can be dangerous: they strive for truth, light and when you do that you attract evil devils, satans, to mislead you.

The Great Work, will be expressed in the book ‘On Nature. The enlightment of Herakleitos the Dark and black angels’ blood’. The so called ontological turn in theology, brought about Ibn Sina’s (Avicenna 980-1037) interpretation of Aristotle and that is the ground from which Heidegger reaped its fruits, allowed the emancipation of philosophy from theology in the Middle Ages, made philosophy free from theology as a autonomous ‘science’ that could rule over the secondary sciences, can now enrich theology from a free distance and transform philosophy into hermetical thinking beyond theology as a science. If you want to explore the ontological turn, the philosophical turn, in theology a bit more go to: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/aristotle-science-big-data-james-roolvink/. The turn is a turn in and of theology so philosophy is in essence theological.

 

The anagogical working of angels

Angels make those who they work on identical with the quality, the transcendent idea, they embody, so make those identical with themselves from a distance. In ordinary awareness all beings are lower beings and the ‘lower’ as an adjective cannot even be used for it implies a higher, highest and what is beyond all hierarchy: the One. In ordinary awareness man is just an intelligent animal and an animal as a complex form an epiphenomenon of one celled beings. In making someone identical from a distance is called the anagogical working of the angels and has the effect of becoming a unity, a soul, and is felt spatially as going up and from the perspective of time as the experience of final causality, the future being already present. Without the vertical hierarchy and knowledge that the horizontal thought of that everything is a ‘lower’ being without categorical differences and just differences in intelligence, (life-)force the anagogical working is not felt (in the soul for the soul is not felt by the soul), not realised and your ontological outlook is that of the golden calf and you will find yourself in the rat race of life. You will see life as the goal rather than a holy means in which you can experience that what is more than life, more than spirit and more than soul.

Higher angels work anagogically on lower angels and the lower angels work directly on higher beings and lower beings (on which higher beings also work directly). One can define man as the being that can participate in multiple anagogical workings escaping the one-sidedness of angels (accept that of Mikail and Jibril and the other two archangels). (Highest beings make present, actualise the present, the lower beings are the present and higher beings are symbolise the past).

 

Verticalization, the monster and disgust

(22-4-2019, Amsterdam). Angels can appear to humans as monstrous, with heads of bulls, wings of eagles, hands of man, legs of lions etc.. In that form of appearance they appear as more animalistic than animals, more ugly than the profane ugly, thus as a holy ugliness. In the appearance of an angel as a ‘monster’ the angel, a highest being, appears as the essence of the lower being ‘animal’ symbolising the ability of the divine to appear in the lower and being the best in being lower.

The angel appears as monstrous to people who do not have ‘transcendent eyes’ and whose eyes can only see (empirical) life and (immanent) spirit (that they interpret as a higher form of life rather than interpret life as a lower form of spirit, (or in the language of Herakleitos interpret clay as a lower form of fire, as less fiery)). This monstrosity of the appearance of the angle verticalizes (the experience of) reality making life (and living spirit (rather than spiritual life)) stand over and against holy spirits, the angels, that refer to that what is beyond spirit, namely the transcendent eternal holy soul and the eternal Holy One. That transcendence shows itself in the lower than low is a sign of the eternal Holy, of transcendence. That ‘sign’ as the structure of an identical non-identity, a similar non-similarity, an equal non-equality. That ‘unholy’ monstrous appearance of the angel is similar to the non-similarity of holiness of the holy angel in relation to mundane life and profane spirit.

If an angel would appear in all his holy beauty to people that do not have transcendent holy eyes, but mundane or profane eyes the beauty, that is more beautiful than profane beauty, would have been reduced to the material, spirit and life. The verticalization would not be established (‘esta’, being, realised). Spirit and/or life would be subsumed under that beauty and the beauty would have been something of spirit or life. In raising spirit and life to holy beauty the holy beauty, the transcendent, is reduced to spirit and life. The angels adjust their appearance to the ones to whom they appear. The distance is not respected.

The ‘structure’ of (the experience) of verticalization could also be described in the following way. The disgusting monstrous as being more an animal than the ugly animal still has an echo of beauty in it. That echo refers to the transcendent that is all present on all levels. The echo ignites a memory of holy beauty, the transcendent. Hearing and seeing the echo in the most ugly transforms the disgust in awe.  

One could say that the (appearance of an) angel as monstrous is a non-identical identity. Non-identical with profane (or mundane) beauty and identical to holy beauty. One could say that the identity, equality is that the angel appears first in the verticalization that the experience of disgust brings about in experiencing the angel, his monstrosity, as more ugly than the ugly. That identity appears after the disgust as being identical to the non-identical holy beauty that is more beautiful than the beauty. The monstrosity of the angel is more equal, the same, than the animal is the same, identical, to itself. Being more the same than the same, being more immanent than the immanent, shows the transcendence in the immanent and thus shows the transcendent.  

The monster itself can be described as a non-identical identity. The monster is not-identical to the animal because it is a monster, but is identical to the animal because it is more an animal than an animal is an animal. The being identical to the animal is more primary than not being identical the animal. The monster as a non-identical identity is similar to the angel and is an angel by analogy. That similarity is that of an angeletic identical non-identity. The monster as a non-identical identity is an identical non-identity to the identical non-identical angel. If the monster was a non-identical identity in relation to the angel the identity with the angel, rather than the non-identity, would be more primary and the angel would be reduced to the monster. The distance is not respected.

Monsters are angeletic and participate as beings that are higher than lower beings in the divine. Angels can be called monstrous in their appearance because monsters are angeletic. Angels can appear as angeletic monsters. Angels can appear as angeletic. (True red can appear as reddish. The ‘reddisch’ participates in transcendent red). Devils are angeletic and angels can appear as devilish because devils are angeletic. The ‘angeletic’ refers to that what is higher than the lower beings, higher than life.

Friendly monsters with higher functions

That monsters can certainly be angeletic can be seen in drawings (of children or adults) who can draw friendly monsters. Monsters being more animalistic than animals and symbolise a life that is more life than life, meaning that the monster refers to the existence of spirit (and that life is concealed spirit). The monster refers to what is higher than life and this more immanent than life itself. Monsters are not necessary evil. (In case you want to identify monsters to devils a friendly monster is a friendly devil. The ‘friendly’, kind, refers to the soul and the ‘devil’ to the kind of spirit that devil is. A monster is different from a devil, a daemon, a djinn as we will show below. A faun as the symbol of life itself is friendly for life embodies soul).  

Monsters are not a malfunction of nature as Aristotle believes, but do not function as natural animals function. The ‘do not’ cannot be translated to the ‘mal’ in ‘malfunction’. ‘Mal’ not as ‘not’, not-function, but can be the mal in ‘malicious’. Monsters can be evil malicious monsters. Monsters function better than animals and that is the reason why you have monsters than can shape shift in different animals. The higher harmony is not the ordinary harmony and that higher appears to logic as irrational non-harmony. (Temporary spirit trapped by timeless logic experiences itself as timeless-temporary life).

The malfunction is identical to good normal functioning and non-identical to the higher functioning as a (categorical) better than good normal functioning. The higher functioning is not a better functioning as if a higher intelligence is still an intelligence, but of a higher grade. The higher functioning is of a categorical difference, a different quality. An intellect or genius is not a higher intelligence, but something totally different, thus non-identical to intelligence.

 

The simple answer of Pseudo-Dionysius & the difference between evil supernatural monsters and supernatural evil monsters

(…Amsterdam). The evil supernatural monster stands over and against the holy supernatural angel as the evil natural monster stands over and against the evil supernatural monster. (Can you spot the difference between an evil supernatural monster and a supernatural evil monster? Evil is supernatural in itself and if you are a supernatural being, a being from a higher physical domain, a higher dimension the effects of your evil are supernatural, but your evil is as evil as that of an evil natural monster. Evil is acting as if you are a god and making yourself (gratification) the sole purpose of your (egotistical) actions).